Tag Archives: juicing

My favorite item at the Farmers Market this year has been pea shoots and it turns out they make a delightful green juice! Paired with jicama and ginger this juice is slightly sweet and as spicy as you want it.

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While on the one hand I would consider the juice feast officially “broken”, on the other I still feel like I’m navigating dietary life cautiously as I continue to be surprised at how different this feast breaking process is. The first time I did this I went back to food with gratitude…and fear. I was afraid of gaining weight before my wedding and I was afraid of what I might eat if given the chance and I spent too much time restricting and feeling the rebound effect of that. This go-round I feel so much more at peace, what and when to eat feels fairly simple. I still love food, I still think about it maybe a little more than is healthy (but wow has that part improved!) and I still have a hearty appetite, even if it’s just for gorgeous salads. Something I love about this particular feast breaking is how much I’m just enjoying the process. The months following the first juice feast saw a lot of dietary experimentation. Everything from a super restrictive diet of green juice and salads to a free-for-all, “I’m going to eat whatever I want” phase, to a super high fruit, high starch, high volume of food in general plan. I tried things I hadn’t eaten in years since getting into cleansing and I’m so grateful for all of it! Even though I put on some weight, even though I went through periods of my skin looking worse than it had ever looked (my body was so clean after the juice feast that it just didn’t tolerate much), and even though I felt like I was floundering and all I wanted to do was juice feast again, I am grateful. So here’s what feels so different this time: I’m still experimenting a little but I’m doing it without fear and with my eyes wide open. I’m present to all the little quirks of what’s working and what’s not and I find that I’m letting go of things that don’t work a lot more quickly. If I spend a night feeling physically miserable because I ate something that my body doesn’t like anymore (mass quantities of anything dry: dates and seaweed specifically), it doesn’t really get me down. I’m just like “oh hey! there’s a new thing that doesn’t work!”. And I move on. So what does my diet look like at the moment? I’m currently loving just having juice during the day (carrot, orange, and jicama based juices with greens are my favorites) with a fairly giant (though not as giant as they once were) salad in the evening. I spent several years juicing, or trying to juice until dinner and I’ve never found it as effortless or enjoyable as I do now. Including fruits is heavenly and great for my state of mind and energy. I’m much more balanced than I was on just green juices and I’m also drinking more (2-3 quarts). The other thing I’m paying attention to is keeping the fats in my diet pretty low- I know there is plenty of controversy around this but I’ve experimented in just about every direction and this really feels best to me. At the moment that’s looking like a half an avocado on my salad at night though I imagine I’ll play with nuts, seeds and coconut as time goes on. I also really thought I’d stay 100% raw for awhile but I was craving cooked veggies and find I do really well as long as they are the smaller part of a giant, juicy salad. I’ve taken a lot from my experimentation with the 80/10/10 diet, I love my simple fruit and veggie based meals, no salt, no oil, really clean. That being said, I just don’t feel as much of a need for that volume of food, I love juicing, I can’t get enough sprouting, and I’ve even got a batch of cultured vegetables happening atop the fridge.

I got a comment once asking why I’m always changing my diet. Can’t I ever just eat and be happy with it? Well here’s the thing…looking back over all my years of experimenting, I wouldn’t change it! I rather love it, it’s kind of a hobby! Since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by the connection between food and how we look and feel and I’m still going with it. I love reading diet books, getting other perspectives, trying them on for myself and usually moving on while keeping some things and tossing the rest. I don’t pretend that my diet now will be my diet for the rest of my life but it feels really great for right now.

Here’s a recipe from my juice feasting days (all of about 10 days ago), you can juice the mango but I found I got a lot more out of it by blending it with the juice and straining it through a nut milk bag.

Spicy Mango Green Juice

6 oranges, peeled

1 jalapeño (with or without seeds)

1 bunch parsley

1 mango, peeled

Juice oranges, jalapeño, and parsley and blend with the mango. Strain in a cheesecloth or nut milk bag.

Ok so you can’t actually “juice” a date- even the freshest dates right off the tree don’t have a lot to offer in the way of juice. That being said, I was craving their sweet caramel flavor and decided to experiment! The following recipes will let you in on my little secret…

Place teabag and water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Let tea steep for around ten minutes while you juice carrots. Remove teabag and pour tea and carrot juice into the blender with the dates. Once thoroughly blended, strain through a nut milk bag or cheesecloth.

Juice Feast Sweet Tea

2 cups water

your favorite teabags or loose leaf tea (this morning I used Dandelion Dark Roast Teeceeno, gotu kola, and chaga mushroom and later on this evening I brewed a blend of chicory, carob, and more chaga.

6-8 medjool dates, pitted

Brew tea and allow to steep for around ten minutes. Remove teabags or strain leaves and blend with the dates in the blender. Strain the dates pulp out through a nut milk bag or cheesecloth.

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Today was alright, I woke up with a headache and a craving for packaged, processed, cheese product. Nope, not even good cheese, the fake stuff. I was going to save any necessary colon cleansing for later in the day, it was my one day off this week and I really wasn’t feeling up for it. My headache however got the best of me so I got it over with and my headache is now nonexistent. Journaling this morning was great, revealing a couple things I hadn’t been wanting to look at and my yoga practice was the strongest it’s been since I’ve started. All of that and I’m feeling a bit “blah”- I don’t know if it’s because Britney’s been out of town and we really need some time to reconnect or if I’ve been busy, busy, busy working all week and it’s weird to have a day at home. In any case, it’s just one day, I was able to cook for Brit (freshly steamed artichokes and avocado aioli!) without any major cravings and we’re catching up on a couple of our favorite shows. This, on top of a good night’s sleep, and I’m sure I’ll feel much brighter in the morning!

Alright, so this isn’t exactly a flu shot but it is an excellent support to healthy immune function as we get into some chillier weather. Ultimately I believe that keeping your insides clean is the best way to stay well but it doesn’t hurt to have a little extra help! As I mentioned a few posts back, I’m head over heels for good quality essential oils. Not only do the oils in this particular blend have strong abilities to kill bad bacteria, mold and viruses but they add a wonderful sweet spiciness to fresh carrot juice. After I finished half of my concoction I topped off my glass with the juice of several kale leaves which created a gorgeous, colorful, chlorophyl-rich treat.

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Delicious, delicious Wednesday. I didn’t take pictures of my juices- I honestly just forgot what day it was. Throughout the day I had 16 oz cucumber/celery juice, 16 oz carrot/romaine/lemon juice, 20 oz coconut water with Vitamineral Green, cacao, and vanilla, 32 oz carrot/romaine juice and 16 oz cucumber/zucchini/romaine/lemon juice with stevia. While cooking dinner I snacked on some cherry tomatoes and dinner itself was a bunch of delicious wraps: butter lettuce stuffed with coconut amino sauteed mushrooms, homemade sauerkraut, raw chipotle avocado sauce and warm broccoli avocado sauce. Dessert hasn’t been on my mind too often which is amazing, I used to not be able to stop eating unless I had dark chocolate to finish a meal!

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I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime since my last post on intuitive eating. Somewhere in the last couple months I decided I was sick of living by rules when it came to eating and decided to throw them out the window. Now I certainly didn’t go off and start wolfing down candy bars and french fries and I remained married to my juicer but I kind of just…stopped caring. I decided to take a conscious pause from my colon cleansing regime. I stopped bringing food with me to events and ate whatever was in front of me. If the group I was with was going out for a heavy brunch or having drinks in the middle of the day or organic-goat-cheese-nachos at midnight, I did too! I was sick of being the odd one out! I was liberated! Sort of…I don’t know when I realized how badly it all was affecting me…how sad and listless I felt. Maybe it was when Britney gently mentioned that I didn’t seem as vibrant and that she missed me, even though I was right there. I forgot how prone I used to be to depression and apathy. I forgot why I got into cleansing. Then I was just angry. Why do I have to be so careful and try so hard? How can my friends live on turkey sandwiches and coffee and seem fine?? There was a post on the Detox the World facebook page the other day that addressed this perfectly:

“Don’t fall into the trap of assuming everyone around you who eats normally and doesn’t cleanse is fine. I hear this all the time: “Everyone else is pretty and thin, happy and heathy and they are living ‘normally’ eating mainstream foods.” You don’t know what their life experience is like on the inside, you only see what they want you to see. I’ve been behind the scenes of countless people’s lives – people who made it look easy to be beautiful, healthy, thin, powerful, stylish (you name it) on the outside but behind closed doors of their homes and hearts they are self-loathing, self-abusive, physically unwell, on medications and otherwise imbalanced in multiple ways. It really is a trap to compare your call-to-cleansing to other people’s life path. If it is time for this work for you, I suggest honoring that!”

I can’t pretend to know what anyone else is feeling or experiencing. I don’t assume that everyone else is miserable just because I struggle when living “normally”. I can only know my experience and I’m remembering why it is so worth it to me to keep my body clean and clear.

This little experiment has impacted me hugely. I don’t feel as burdened by “rules” as I did. I’m still learning to what degree I can eat intuitively and where I need to plan more carefully. When I was in Natalia’s advanced training something that she said really stuck with me: we can’t eat intuitively because we don’t live in an intuitive world. I disagreed a little at the time and even more later but now I see what she means. I live in a very planned and scheduled world full of social expectations that easily keep me from living in the experience that I want. When I “go with the flow” (eating what other people eat, etc) I eventually start to break down. My mental and emotional states are difficult even though I’m trying so desperately to relax and enjoy myself. I just feel “off”. When I’m more cautious, when I take the time to notice what my body really needs (in terms of food, movement, time alone, etc) I feel like I’m myself again. Not to mention colon cleansing, something that I’ve integrated into my life so regularly for the last couple of years that I had no idea how detrimental it would be to remove it.

I still love the idea of eating intuitively but in order to do that and still feel like I want to I have to be more prepared. I have to care more. The question I’ve started asking myself now in terms of what to eat next is “how do I want to feel?”. Not “what sounds tastiest to me right now?”. I refuse to be dogmatic about juicing until any certain time of day and I insist on enjoying my food and choosing things that align with my cravings. Bingeing is not an option but occasional overeating is not the end of the world. A simple vegetable centric diet supplemented with juices and colon cleansing are where it’s at for me- beyond that, I make the rules. I’m learning how to find the greatest amount of freedom and pleasure in a lifestyle that requires certain boundaries.

I’ve been back on track for about a week now and I couldn’t be more grateful. I feel like myself again, actually alive with the ability to CHOOSE whether I want to react positively or negatively rather than just feeling like a robot who’s default is “apathetic”. Now I’m off to enjoy my lunch: carrot/romaine/fennel juice blended with an avocado, sweet potato, carob powder and stevia. I’ll be savoring every last drop :)